July 02, 2016

Why David Bowie's "Labyrinth" Is So Memorable

Another great talent lost.

Jim Henson’s beloved 1986 movie musical Labyrinth, one of only two
non-Muppets films the legendary puppeteer directed, is famous for
several reasons.

Fans of David Bowie will recall visions of the
late musician wearing extremely tight trousers that fail to obscure an
enormously large codpiece. Bowie wrote and performed all the songs,
including the iconic Dance Magic Dance.
He plays a nefarious, all-singing, all-dancing king of a fantasy world
of goblins, castles and all manner of strange colourful creatures.

One of Labyrinth’s best-known scenes is a sensational finale that takes place on a set modelled on Escher staircases. It is also the production that brought a then-unknown, then-15-year-old Jennifer Connelly to the public’s attention.

But undoubtedly the most memorable parts of the film, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with a return to cinemas and a new Blu-ray edition, are the many extraordinary creatures designed and operated by Henson and his team.

Like 1982’s The Dark Crystal, the other non-Muppets movie directed by
Henson (who co-directed it with Frank Oz) the technology used was at the
forefront of animatronics. The film-makers pushed the capabilities of
radio-controlled puppetry, in a decade that was arguably the greatest
period in history for cinema puppets.

Although computer-generated images have been used in film since the
1970s, it wasn’t until the ‘90s – following the success of game-changing
releases such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Jurassic Park – that
Hollywood truly embraced CGI. With the inundation of computer effects
came a growing reduction in “real” on-set physical elements, such as
puppets.

The babe with the powerThe
wonderful handmade aesthetic of Labyrinth is the main reason the film
has dated so well. Three decades later it still looks breathtaking; one
of those viewing experiences that regularly provokes the question “how
did they do that?”

The plot revolves around Sarah (Connelly), who is upset that she is
being forced to stay home and babysit her baby brother. When she wishes
goblins will come and take him away her wish is granted, the Goblin King
(Bowie) snatches the baby, holding him captive in his castle. He gives
Sarah 13 hours to solve the labyrinth before her sibling is turned into a
goblin.

One of the first creatures she encounters in the Goblin
King's fantastical world is a dwarf named Hoggle: a morally dubious,
Sméagol-esque character whose motives and allegiances are unclear. With a
huge lumpy nose, spurts of shoulder-length white hair and a crinkled,
finely detailed face, Hoggle is an amazing puppet, at once both magical
and realistic.

His seemingly effortless facial and body movements required the
collaboration of six people working in real time. The character’s large
face contained 18 motors, which were manipulated off-frame by four crew
members using remote controls. Diminutive actor Shari Weiser controlled
Hoggle's body and Brian Henson, Jim’s son, provided his voice.

Henson’s fixation on tangible things – things you could literally reach
out and touch – extended further than just the puppets. One time when
Sarah, in a down-the-rabbit-hole moment, takes a tumble she falls into
the so-called Shaft of Hands, an eerily surreal tunnel that looks like something out of a Guillermo del Toro film.

The shaft is comprised of real human hands, which come out of the
walls to form the shape of human faces. To achieve this the crew wore
green foam latex gloves, hid behind scaffolding and performed
extensively rehearsed hand movements. The effect is startling. Writer
Dennis Lee once described it as “one of those magic moments”, where the
quality of the effect actually improved on the vision in his
imagination.

The creatures in Labyrinth vary substantially in
size, from a small cheeky worm (replete with miniature red scarf and
tufts of blue hair) to a huge, hairy, horn-clad gentle giant the size of
several people. This is Ludo, Sarah's sidekick of sorts, who also
attended the film’s premiere and met a very confused looking Princess Diana.

The largest puppet in the film was 15ft (4.57m) high, the biggest
Henson had ever built. Appropriately named Humongous, this
hydraulics-operated creature is a robot that guards the entrance to the
Goblin City. It looks shiny and hard, as if it were constructed using
sheets of metal. It was actually built out of foam and made to look
reflective.

Creature comfortsThe
innovators who worked on these effects belonged to visual effects
company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which was founded in 1979. Even
though Hollywood moved enthusiastically into the space of digital
trickery, and thus the construction of elaborate puppets became scarcer,
the workshop has continued to have a significant presence in the film
and TV industry.

In the mid ‘90s it built animatronic animals for the Australian
family film Babe, earning the company an Academy Award for Best Visual
Effects. It provided prosthetics for another Oscar-winning film, 1996’s
The English Patient, as well as a litany of masks, objects and character
elements for countless productions over the years.

The Creature Shop’s output
now largely involves bringing small touches to specific scenes. In
recent years this includes supplying animatronic tigers for The
Darjeeling Limited (2007) and The Hangover (2009), and stand-in puppets
for the new The Jungle Book adaption.
These puppets were used so the lead actor, Neel Sethi, had actual
characters to engage with on-set, and were edited out in
post-production.

The company has also developed technology for
digital environments, but, in typical Henson fashion, with a hands-on
twist. An offshoot of the company, the Henson Digital Puppetry Studio,
creates 3D-animated characters controlled by hand using dozens of
buttons and levers.

These characters can be operated in real time,
including both body and facial movements, allowing a spontaneity that
cannot be achieved using traditional (known as ‘keyframe’) computer
animation. The technology is used most commonly in children’s television
programs, where budgets are lower and the turnaround time is faster.

For the production of director Spike Jonze’s 2009 adaptation of
children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, the Creature Shop was given a
rare opportunity to create the kind of handmade visual effects not
unlike those they produced in the ‘80s. The huge, furry,
poignant-looking faces of the gentle giants in this film, about a child
who visits a fantasy world that exists in his imagination, bear some
resemblance to that big lovable lug Ludo.He, along
with Hoggle, Humongous and David Bowie's codpiece, will return to
cinemas this year, when the 30th anniversary screenings of Labyrinth
commence. But in a sense they never left. While the film was a
commercial disappointment when it was first released, it has for decades
remained a popular title on the bill at repertory cinemas around the
world.